RAYMIE, DICKIE, AND THE BEAN

In this flashy, fragmentary memoir, Romano casts himself as a ten-year-old, roughhousing with brothers Dickie (12) and Bean (four) while taking a trip to an amusement park. Wide-eyed, open-mouthed faces thrust up against the picture planes, the brothers in Locke’s technically adept but overwrought art grimace frantically, but can’t rescue the routine assortment of noogies, wedgies, grossouts (“Good thing about eating with Bean: He can never finish his food. Bad thing about eating with Bean: Food makes him stinky”) and minor misadventures that the author seems to think will engage young readers—or, more likely, their parents. Romano’s dispirited reading on the enclosed CD perfectly captures the mediocrity of this lackadaisical crossover attempt. (Picture book. 6-8)